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The NRA's inside man

The National Rifle Association’s leader, Wayne LaPierre, is still digging in three months after the Newtown, Conn., shootings — taking the kind of hard line on gun rights that might rally the NRA’s base but leaves some wondering how the group is so powerful in Washington.

The answer: The group’s real influence inside the Beltway is being brokered quietly by gun lobbyists like Jim Baker who are leading the effort on Capitol Hill to make sure key senators don’t buck the NRA on gun legislation.

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NRA's Wayne LaPierre at CPAC

It’s a strategy that plays both the inside and outside games. LaPierre rallies the masses on cable news, Baker works the halls of Congress and behind it all is a grass-roots network of 5-million NRA supporters who mobilize fast.

Many big interest groups have the same playbook, in which a fiery front man offers a public face, while a trusted inside-man works the halls of Congress where deals really get made — — or blocked.

Baker, known as a respected Second Amendment expert, built his power base over decades by working the halls of Congress, earning the trust of Democrats and Republicans — and putting real money behind his word and into the coffers of reelection campaigns.

His work — which flies under the media’s radar because he and the rest of the NRA’s lobbying arm rarely speak to the press — is the real reason the group has beaten back almost every attempt to reform gun laws in the country for decades, including a recent effort by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to reinstate a ban on assault rifles.

So when LaPierre, appearing Sunday on “Meet the Press,” accused gun control advocate and billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg of trying to “buy America” for bankrolling a $12 million dollar ad campaign, there’s more to the story of how the NRA does business.

A perfect example of the LaPierre-Baker strategy: While LaPierre was bashing Vice President Joe Biden’s task force from behind lecterns soon after the Newtown shootings, Baker sat down a few weeks later with Biden for a White House meeting with gun advocates. The two men — who’ve known each other for years — bantered before the meeting started, according to a source in the room.

And after the meeting, Baker left out hyperbole from his comments. “We disagreed, obviously, on important issues,” Baker said. Further, Baker said the NRA “would do everything in our power” to ensure new gun ownership restrictions don’t pass.

“He is thinking in three dimensions all the time,” said Patrick O’Malley, Baker’s former deputy who still represents gun groups as a lobbyist. “He’s playing a three-dimensional game of chess looking at the House side, Senate side and what’s going to work in conference. He’s thinking about conference before anything hits the floor.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has said he is continuing talks with the NRA over background check legislation that he hopes to have in a final package that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is expected bring to the floor in April.